A long time ago I actually had thought up a plot for what phantom menace should have been(almost anything is better than what was seen.) It went something like this:

Anakin is not on Tattoine first and foremost. This coincidental crap has to be cut out. Where do we hide baby luke? On the planet Anakin was born of course!!! Totally logical!!

I pictured anakin as being born on some dystopian like planet where he was something like a slave child gladiator be forced to provide entertainment to wealthy elites. His mother tries to tend his wounds from the matches and his father while stern does his best to try and train him to stay alive for possible manumission while imparting unto him a warriors code. This would have served a few purposes.

1) The training would have honed his reflexes which would have explained his reputed battle prowess remarked on by Obiwan later in the story line.

2) Being surrounded by death and violence all the time could be used to show him developing a disturbed personality opening him up for later manipulation by palpatine to embrace the darkside and his own suppressed rage.

3) It would have given Quigon or whatever his name is a stronger reason to take an interest in Anakin as he would see Anakin as a potential force using massmurderer if someone didn't remove him from that environment.

4) Somehow the father would have died(at the hands of alien guards) trying to get anakin out of the gladiator pits thus removing someone extremely close and steering him straight. Only his mother remains trying to calm anakins seething hostility towards aliens.

5) Somehow they get to naboo and their is a gungan type race only it is much more lizard like and looks kind of like bipedal iguanas. The replacement for Jar Jar (lets call him jamie) would have been exiled on religious grounds. Not able to produce eggs is taken as a sign of the Gods displeasure with a grievous sin and so she is an outcast looking for vindication and saying things like "The Gods know no sin is upon me!!!"

6) the Gungan replacements don't have a huge clunky army like what is depicted but instead a sleeker one that takes advantage of stealth, camoflage, and misdirection to confuse the droid army and lead it into a trap.

7) Darth maul is on Naboo and while fighting in the residential area with the jedi kills both Wuigon and Anakins mother reinforcing Anakin's hatred of aliens and causing him to lash out with the force without any control obliterating almost everything around him and ripping Darth Maul apart. He then faints.

8) Obiwan having witnessed and barely survived Anakins force display takes him to train as a jedi because he is obviously dangerous and if not trained will start killing with the force in fits of rage. Killing him while he is a child is clearly not the way of the jedi. He tries to pick up where Anakins father left off, instilling in anakin a code of honor and trying to calm his fury and by now pronounced xenophobia.

Anakin wasn't supposed to be a defective kid. I don't know why everyone is wishing they had gotten an evil, creepy child instead of the happy, good-hearted one. THAT WAS THE POINT. The Dark Side corrupted him. He wasn't always evil.

If he was evil, creepy, and angry in the first place, then what's the point of all of Yoda's warnings about fear and attachment leading to the Dark Side? What's the point of the Jedi's monastic existence? The reason they grab kids when they're babies and train them to be Jedi is because they believe (and rightly so) that the Dark Side or misuse of the Force can lead a person to evil deeds; It's not the other way around!

You aren't evil, then seek out the Dark Side. You're seduced by the Dark Side and become evil.

"You don't know the power of the Dark Side." -Vader

He's saying he wants to be like he was as a young man, but he cannot because the Dark Side holds him hostage and makes him commit the evil acts he knows he has committed. He wishes he could go back to how it was before he was seduced by power and murdered children, but he's a slave to it.

He's always a slave. ALL his life, Anakin/Vader is a slave. He's a slave to Watto and the Hutts, and then he's a slave to love, and finally a slave to the Dark Side and Palpatine.

He isn't free until his son Luke sets him free... And even then it's only to die as a free, sovereign man.

There's another point to his good nature as a child. He is the result of Darth Plagueis manipulating the Force to create life. He is, in essence, a creation of the Dark Side, and yet his nature is kind and benevolent. The Force itself is neutral, and the good/evil comes in how you access and use it. Anakin is a living representation of that-- Sort of the argument that all babies, regardless of their origin or parents, are born agnostic.

Anakin is agnostic in the beginning. He feels the Force, but it's neither dark or light. It's his mother and her love that has made him a good person, and it's the loss of love-- both Shmi's and the threat of losing Padme's-- that makes him desperate enough to use the Dark Side of the Force. He does it when he's young and facing the Tusken Raiders, and he does it later when he believes he's going to lose Padme.

It's a story of a good man who is manipulated BECAUSE he loves so deeply, and is such a noble, good person at heart.

If he were just an evil dick his whole life, then all Obi-Wan would have had to say in ANH was, "I knew your father. He was always kind of an evil dick. Here's his lightsaber; Don't do what he did, kid."

But instead he referred to Anakin as a good friend, a noble soul, a good man, and a hero before he was corrupted by the Dark Side. Obi-Wan NEVER says anything like, "He was always prone to anger and the Dark Side just made it worse." --- He even makes it clear that he believes that Anakin died when the Dark Side took him. Why? Because Anakin was a good man, and what he became was nothing like the man he used to be.

But the way people talk about the kid, it seems like they wanted an asshole who just becomes a powerful asshole when he learns the Force.

Yes, TPM is a dull flick. Yes, it's all set-up and exposition that should have been done in some other format. But it's necessary to understand that Vader wasn't always evil. He was a good person at heart. THAT'S THE DAMNED POINT OF HIS REDEMPTION SCENE IN ROTJ.

ExperianScaresCthulhu:I also thought having anakin act like an actual kid instead of a 70 year old in a 10 year old's body was fresh. That just isn't done, in American movies. All little kids have to be smarter and wiser than adults. Anakin acting like a real child was jarring, wasn't it?

The problem wasn't Anakin acting like a child, it was Anakin acting like an unreasonably cherubic child. Even in the absence of context, a kid from the extreme end of a lower-class upbringing in the mob-owned neighborhood having no socially unacceptable habits whatsoever was enough to set off even and actual 10-year-old's fake-dar.

Add to that how the movie was promoted:

Come on, seriously... you literally promise us foreshadowing and we don't get a single hint of suppressed anger in the kid? Not some element of jealousy or controlling nature? Nothing?

Hell, I was overall a good kid from a middle-class neighborhood and at 10 years I had plenty of obvious aggression issues, and I didn't grow up to murder even one youngling.

I like Jar Jar.I liked the Gungans, and found their underwater society intriguing and wish it could have been revisited.I didn't like the racial aspects.They weren't the only ones to suffer negative racial stereotyping.

I also thought having anakin act like an actual kid instead of a 70 year old in a 10 year old's body was fresh. That just isn't done, in American movies. All little kids have to be smarter and wiser than adults. Anakin acting like a real child was jarring, wasn't it?

I believe the problems with the pre-trilogy had to do with lack of coherent story and dismissal/disrespect of two decades worth fan fiction and extended universe canon for no other reason than .... I don't know. These movies should never have had Star wars attached to them. They should have been a parallel universe type story, with different characters instead of nostalgia porn. If these three movies didn't have 'star wars' in front of them, they'd be better received in hindsight... kind of like if FFX-2, FF12 and FF13 -- and especially the movie -- didn't have Final Fantasy attached, they'd all be better received.

Sun Worshiping Dog Launcher:This. Jar Jar was a lightning rod as to what was wrong with the initial movie. but ultimately, he served his purpose as a kid-friendly character, and though silly, a tight script and well-directed movie would have not suffered from his inclusion.

I can remember the exact moment I facepalmed in the theatre when I first watched The Phantom Menace..... the moment that I realized this was going to be a big, steaming turd and I had wasted my money.

It was right after Qui Gon met Jar Jar in the forest. And Jar Jar is following him around and he exclaims "ex-squeeze me..."

And I thought, "Isn't that a catch phrase from farking Stephanie Tanner on Full House?" ....and then later on, he exclaims "How wude!" and pouts, just like farking Stephanie Tanner.

My mouth gaped open. Why.....is George Lucas....stealing dialogue.... from farking Full House, the most whitebread, milquetoast, offensively lame television show in history?! Why.... is dialogue... from a farking wholesome family television show that ranks on the stomach-churning scale between The Family Circus and Up With People.... in a space fantasy movie?!

WHY DID HE DO THAT?! Did he think it would make Jar Jar cuter, like the Olson twins? Jar Jar's not farking human and he's not a baby. He's a creepy, uncanny-valley affirming motherfarking CGI alien.

This kind of genre-mashing is just so out of place. It'd be like Gandalf riding a skateboard and slam dunking a basketball at Bilbo's birthday party. That's the level of disconnect here.

SwissArmyGnome:I have said this before. Jar Jar Binks is not the worst thing in the prequels. He's not even the worst thing in that first movie. Let that sink in.

He was better acted, less irritating, and had more to do with the story than that damned Anakin kid, for one thing.

This. Jar Jar was a lightning rod as to what was wrong with the initial movie. but ultimately, he served his purpose as a kid-friendly character, and though silly, a tight script and well-directed movie would have not suffered from his inclusion. His irritating traits were harder to overlook because aside from about 5 minutes of lightsaber fights in the first movie, there was nothing for adults to enjoy. Anakin was terrible and was one of the most poorly acted child roles that I have ever seen in a motion picture. I've seen kids that were better actors on daytime soap operas.

I actually blame Jake Lloyd less than I do Lucas. Lucas cannot get a decent performance out of an actor. If you have Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor in your movie and critics talk repeatedly about how lifeless all 3 of them are, then the fault is going to be on the director, not the actors. If Liam Neeson can't get going as a Jedi master, then what chance does a little kid have playing the future dark lord of the Sith?

I swear, I always think I'm done biatching about the prequels, but I just get dragged back in every time.

So the essential arc of Jar-Jar is that a borderline retarded black man gains a senate seat through affirmative because Amidala wants to enforce racial equality in the Naboo parliament after decades of Gungan oppression, and this stupid black man then brings about the collapse of the government due to his overwhelming retarded blackness?

It's worse than the "Five dorrar! Five dorrar!" Chinese whackiness of the Trade Federation. Or the hook-nosed Shylock rubbing his dirty hands together over the sale of Anakin's mother.

As I've said many times before, if Lucas had revealed in the third movie that Jar Jar was the actual Dark Lord of the Sith and the Emperor the Sith apprentice, Jar Jar would have gone down as the greatest villain in cinematic history this side of Darth Vader. The character would have made complete sense and all of the stupid stuff that happened in the first film would have had a whole new subtext.

But, alas. Lucas has such contempt for his fans that he decided that Jar Jar needs to not only be stupid, but also simple-minded and tragic in the end. That's what you get for trying to replicate success on your own that was originally built with the creative contributions of hundreds of other people. Lucas was a great visionary leader on the first three films, but he proved what a terrible writer and director he is in the prequels.

I hate saying this, because it hurts as a fan, but star wars really wasn't all that good. Don't get me wrong, there hasn't really been anything made since it that's been all around better than what we got with the first 3 movies, but looking back the acting was fairly mediocre and the plot wasn't all that inspired and there was a lot of stuff that plain didn't make any senese.

Given the gap in years from then (and how heavily Lucas collaborated on the original movies, especially the second move, the Empire Strikes Back, which is easily the most superior movie of the entire lot) it's easy to see how once given free creative reign he could craft a bunch of stinkers.

I mean, fark it, George Lucas isn't really all that farking talented. He got lucky with one concept and then made a few other servicable movies. Have any of you seen the latest Indiana Jones movie? If that's not an argument for Lucas losing whatever few marbles he had as a writer to age and hubris, then I don't know what is.

ExperianScaresCthulhu:I liked the suggestion in the other thread, to make the shiat talked about in Phantom Menace backstory instead of a whole movie. I think Lucas was constrained by having to do three movies because that's what was expected of him; that, and being a slave to linear story telling.

The webcomic Darths and Droids accidentally patched up most of the glaringly bad stuff in the writing, albeit usually with tongue pretty firmly in cheek. The Anakin-is-a-little-angel thing was solved by turning the "mean kids pick on the poor little tyke" scene into a schoolyard fight that gets out of hand and ends in Anakin killing (albeit accidentally) the other guy. This is what motivates the rapid departure from Tattooine and results in leaving the mother behind, rather than the contrived nonsense that the actual movies used. That was all the movie needed, one hint of lost control.

Of course, the writing failure for little Anakin was kind of compounded by the acting failure for adult Anakin. Christiansen's decision to spit out every line like he was already a chaotic evil blood knight from his first minute on screen (when, you'll recall, he's a well-regarded padawan who is liked by everyone around him according to his told character) instead of at least trying to seem like a nice guy made the transition jarring and out of character even more than the bad writing.

farkeruk:Bagshot: What about the Ewoks? They were rubbish! You don't complain about them!Tim: Yeah, but Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like... farking Shaft!

That said, people who put the whole responsibility onto Jar Jar are simply looking for something to tag their general annoyance on. If the story and characters had been good, people would have overlooked Jar Jar.

If the movies had been good, Lucas could have claimed the right of prima notte with every SW geek out there for the rest of his life. Instead, when his vision was criticized, he chose to show contempt for the very people that built his empire. I'm not a fanboy, but I know bad editing, bad pacing, wooden acting, a poor script, and lazy direction when I see it. No George, no more of my money for you.

It's OK. From what I hear, he redeemed himself with Red Tails. Can't wait to see his next vision brought to the big screen!

Bagshot: What about the Ewoks? They were rubbish! You don't complain about them!Tim: Yeah, but Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like... farking Shaft!

That said, people who put the whole responsibility onto Jar Jar are simply looking for something to tag their general annoyance on. If the story and characters had been good, people would have overlooked Jar Jar.

The prequels had no soul. They were clumsily overbearing train wrecks. With long boring action sequences in substitute of any depth or character detail. They come off as kids movies.He should never have made them.

Jim_Callahan:The problem wasn't Anakin acting like a child, it was Anakin acting like an unreasonably cherubic child. Even in the absence of context, a kid from the extreme end of a lower-class upbringing in the mob-owned neighborhood having no socially unacceptable habits whatsoever was enough to set off even and actual 10-year-old's fake-dar.

Add to that how the movie was promoted:

[www.moviegoods.com image 200x294]

Come on, seriously... you literally promise us foreshadowing and we don't get a single hint of suppressed anger in the kid? Not some element of jealousy or controlling nature? Nothing? Hell, I was overall a good kid from a middle-class neighborhood and at 10 years I had plenty of obvious aggression issues, and I didn't grow up to murder even one youngling.

Hadn't thought about that. You do raise some serious points. None of the other slave children (played by the Lucas moppets) did either, though. But you raise some serious points. Didn't have to be Hailey Eisenberg, just Haley Joel Osment. We did get a hint with older Anakin in Clone, when Shmi was killed.

Maybe a story with a kid who's happy go lucky because his life is good because his mother shields him from the realities of being a slave/lower class (some Life is Beautiful type shiat, or it's opposite where the kids are happy because all they know is slavery and degradation and this is just how the world is.. but the audience should be given more to chew on that the kids can't see), and ......the coming disillusionment with the social order, and being lied to by Palpatine and the others like Dooku about what they are planning to do to change things so that even poor kids can survive but come to find out Palpatine just wants power and the ability to oppress causing disillusionment but Anakin thinks it's too late and that's why he succumbs to the darkside and no matter how bad ass he is, we get shades of the first movie where Darth Vader -- for all his badassness -- is actually a lackey... and the emperor's whole thing is his need to control Darth out of some twisted paternal shiat coupled with fearful shiat and making Darth believe this was for the good of the Empire........ or I don't know.

But you're right. That movie poster was a hell of a thing to live up to, yes. And it didn't.

I liked the suggestion in the other thread, to make the shiat talked about in Phantom Menace backstory instead of a whole movie. I think Lucas was constrained by having to do three movies because that's what was expected of him; that, and being a slave to linear story telling.

Coelacanth:If they had kept that one scene in, then Jar Jar would've made some sense.

Honestly, him standing up to introduce the legislation that activated the villain's trap card was in itself probably the high point of the second movie for me. I mean, it causes the trilogy to transition from "stupid people have whacky hijinks, but there's no harm done and it's all for the best" into stupid disregard for logic, reason and decorum suddenly having some pretty dire consequences.

Still by far the worst of the prequels, which were collectively basically disappointingly mediocre, but still a high point in that context.

The 3-d animated show had the right take on Jar-Jar: he represents chaotic good: He's like the "drunken master" martial arts guy: a tool of the Force that doesn't consciously control his powers, but thru fandom chance, every "accident" he creates has an overall positive, though unanticipated result.

THIS would make Jar-Jar the awesome character the kiddies would like to collect: Kids are clumsy in adolescence, they break things, they make rash decisions that are incompletely panned-out, but in their minds their intent is positive. Jar-Jar as chaotic good Jedi by Accident says to them: we know your intentions are good, you're just immature and clumsy, but some day you'll grow out of that."

As far as Annakin, I think a lot of this was made worse by hand-fisted and wrong edits Lucas made. He spent too much screen time on the spectacles and not enough on proper character development and motivation. He shot but threw away scenes of Padme sitting in on the creation of what will be the Rebel Alliance. Had he left that in, and let Annakin discover his wife and master teacher were in on a conspiracy that he had been risking his life to fight, Discovering his religion and his woman are all (in his eyes) lies and deceit, fueled by prompts from the Emperor, THAT makes for proper farking motivation for turning into VADER. It's the most classic conflict in human history: Love vs. Fear. Trust vs. suspicion.

FunkOut:When I first saw the artwork for Jar Jar Bink, there was no name on it and he looked quite solemn and sad. Mournful even. Then he turned out to be a slapstick nitwit with a daft name. Too bad, it was an interesting creature design with those ears and eyes.

Tax Boy:TyrantII: I love the special feature bit where it's essentially the first screening of TPM before some big editing decisions need to be made. Lucus has got a child smile on his face, yet everyone else in the special feature looks bordering on unabridged terror. You can see it in their eyes they know it absolutely stinks, but no one will speak up to king George who simply thinks it perfect.

It's amusing as hell. The editors, producers and everyone else in that room was pissing their pants.

That's one of my favorite parts of the Plinkett reviews, if only for the moment where it is so clear exactly how bad it is, that Lucas actually apologizes for the end of the movie. Well, as close as we're ever going to get.

Every year at San Diego Comic Con, every major toy manufacturer does an exclusive just for the con (and a limited number of online sales). This year is a "Lost Line" type thing, with one figure from each film in special packaging made to look as it Kenner was still making them. There's a bonus figure that you can only get in this set, however, and it was revealed yesterday:

ExperianScaresCthulhu:I liked the suggestion in the other thread, to make the shiat talked about in Phantom Menace backstory instead of a whole movie. I think Lucas was constrained by having to do three movies because that's what was expected of him; that, and being a slave to linear story telling.

THIS

The first movie should have been more or less episode II then the motherfarking CLONE WARS as the second movie, then episode III as the third movie.

Nihilist's Guide to Reticent Entropy:Anakin wasn't supposed to be a defective kid. I don't know why everyone is wishing they had gotten an evil, creepy child instead of the happy, good-hearted one. THAT WAS THE POINT. The Dark Side corrupted him. He wasn't always evil.

I think by "evil" or "edge" people meant "not from a My Buddy commercial" and "able to act." If the kid had an ounce of anything other than robotic cute-kid 2.0 running through his veins, nobody would have ever brought it up. Same thing with the sequels. Nobody should blame the actors, in my opinion. The writing was impossible to work with, and the direction seemed almost like Lucas spent the whole shoot huffing markers and trying to figure out how the merchandise would look.

TwistedFark:I hate saying this, because it hurts as a fan, but star wars really wasn't all that good. Don't get me wrong, there hasn't really been anything made since it that's been all around better than what we got with the first 3 movies, but looking back the acting was fairly mediocre and the plot wasn't all that inspired and there was a lot of stuff that plain didn't make any senese.

You're right but the big difference is that the original Star Wars is fun to watch. No movie can be perfect, and Star Wars had tons of flaws, but who hasn't dreamed of flying an X-wing? Or just being Luke, or Han, or even Darth Vader? For all the nitpick bullshiat things that are wrong with it, there's so much that's right.

Which is why all the Star Wars retcon things piss me off so much. Just admit it was a flaw, don't try and make up some BS excuse why the Kessel run was a distance not a time.

born_yesterday:farkeruk: Bagshot: What about the Ewoks? They were rubbish! You don't complain about them!Tim: Yeah, but Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like... farking Shaft!

That said, people who put the whole responsibility onto Jar Jar are simply looking for something to tag their general annoyance on. If the story and characters had been good, people would have overlooked Jar Jar.

If the movies had been good, Lucas could have claimed the right of prima notte with every SW geek out there for the rest of his life. Instead, when his vision was criticized, he chose to show contempt for the very people that built his empire. I'm not a fanboy, but I know bad editing, bad pacing, wooden acting, a poor script, and lazy direction when I see it. No George, no more of my money for you.

It's OK. From what I hear, he redeemed himself with Red Tails. Can't wait to see his next vision brought to the big screen!

From everything I've heard Red Tails sucks, and has all the problems of other Lucas-controlled films.

Jim_Callahan:ExperianScaresCthulhu: I liked the suggestion in the other thread, to make the shiat talked about in Phantom Menace backstory instead of a whole movie. I think Lucas was constrained by having to do three movies because that's what was expected of him; that, and being a slave to linear story telling.

The webcomic Darths and Droids accidentally patched up most of the glaringly bad stuff in the writing, albeit usually with tongue pretty firmly in cheek. The Anakin-is-a-little-angel thing was solved by turning the "mean kids pick on the poor little tyke" scene into a schoolyard fight that gets out of hand and ends in Anakin killing (albeit accidentally) the other guy. This is what motivates the rapid departure from Tattooine and results in leaving the mother behind, rather than the contrived nonsense that the actual movies used. That was all the movie needed, one hint of lost control.

Of course, the writing failure for little Anakin was kind of compounded by the acting failure for adult Anakin. Christiansen's decision to spit out every line like he was already a chaotic evil blood knight from his first minute on screen (when, you'll recall, he's a well-regarded padawan who is liked by everyone around him according to his told character) instead of at least trying to seem like a nice guy made the transition jarring and out of character even more than the bad writing.

That's one of many problems. Anakin in Clones doesnt even vaguely resemble Anakin from TPM. His impatience and brooding angst are never adequately explained.

SwissArmyGnome:I have said this before. Jar Jar Binks is not the worst thing in the prequels. He's not even the worst thing in that first movie. Let that sink in.

He was better acted, less irritating, and had more to do with the story than that damned Anakin kid, for one thing.

So much this. I don't harbor much hate toward Best. It takes a singular vision to make Ray Park, Ewan MacGregor and Liam Neeson painful to watch and that lies right at the bloated lap of Lucas himself.